by Howard, Bob
Iris couldn’t help but smile.
“I can’t wait to find out if your best guess was accurate. Personally, I like the odds given that the array also turns faster, but I have one question. Was the rate of turn always ten seconds per degree before, or was that the average?”
The communications staff was impressed by the mayor’s question. She could tell by their beaming smiles.
“It was the average, Ma’am. Sometimes it was faster, and sometimes it was slower. That would suggest it was having to push bodies around on its tracks.”
“Let’s act on that assumption for now,” said Iris, “and start mapping contacts. We need to have a clear picture of the world before we go up there. Speaking of which, has anyone had any luck finding Hopkins?”
The answer wasn’t the good news she wanted to hear.
Andi sat a map on the table nearest to Iris and put her finger on a small town just south of Columbia, South Carolina. It sat in the middle of farm country and was situated along a road that ran roughly parallel to I-26.
******
Before the infection arrived and destroyed civilization, Hopkins, South Carolina was a small town of less than three thousand people. Off the beaten path, the secluded farm community was popular with people who wanted to live where they didn’t have to deal with noise, traffic, or other people. At the same time, it was close enough to Columbia, Charleston, and Myrtle Beach when it became too quiet. Hopkins was one of those places that seemed to be ignored by time because it was far enough away from the main highways, but when people started dying, it was in the way just like every other town.
It was a fair assumption that the current residents of Hopkins had all come from somewhere else before the infected had arrived. They only stayed in Hopkins because someone organized the survivors who had nowhere else to go. There were no natural barriers that provided permanent protection from the infected, but the survivors had worked long and hard on their fallback plans.
Lake Weston was popular because there were bigger and better places for fishing and water sports available to the public. After it was wiped clean of life during the first few weeks of the infection, the dead just wandered away. There really wasn’t anything to keep them there.
When survivors discovered the campgrounds and rental cabins, they realized they could build barriers along one side and keep the lake at their backs on the other three sides. The lack of infected dead in the area was something that bothered the survivors only because they couldn’t explain it, but they weren’t going to let it bother them enough to make them leave. If they had known it was only because there weren’t any survivors at the beginning, maybe they would have thought twice about staying.
They began working as fast as they could to build their barrier, and there were plenty of trees for the task. When it was finished, the only way for the infected to get inside the new town of Hopkins was by walking out of the lake. Unfortunately, the infected could do that, and it was a stroke of luck that they arrived during daylight hours.
The survivors had just begun working on the second phase of their plan when they got their surprise. They decided to build a long dock out to the center of the lake. At the end of the dock would be a floating fortress, and it could be disconnected from the dock by a drawbridge. The principle wasn’t a new idea. Centuries ago the foundations of Venice, Italy had been strengthened by driving trees straight down into shallow water and then building on top of them.
The dock was close to finished when the bloated bodies started crawling up onto the banks. It was a wake up call, and guards were posted all along the waterfront. It was a nervous community, and despite their previous efforts the survivors had to build a fence at the waterline. The water served as a way to slow down the infected, so it was safer than open ground behind them, but the end result was the speed at which they worked to finish their fort on the lake.
The fort became the home of the Hopkins survivors before it was finished, but to their surprise it was enough to be what they hoped it would be. It was a safe haven for them and a trap for the infected.
At sundown on the first night, all of the guards were brought out to the fort, and the drawbridge was raised. The decision was made to let everyone rest for the first time in weeks. If the infected dead found their way into the camp, they would be dealt with.
In the darkness of that first night, they heard the splashes, and by moonlight they gathered to watch as the infected labored up the wet banks, fell through the bars of the log fences, and dragged their heavy bodies to the long dock that led to the fort. It was almost a final insult when they reached the end of the dock and fell into the water where the drawbridge would have been. It was a weary group that settled into an uneasy existence in Hopkins.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Changes
Six Years After the Decline
The mood at Fort Sumter was a mixture of sadness and anger with more than a touch of worry. Molly was still unconscious, and the soldiers were covering their worry with their anger. They would have liked nothing more than to mobilize and go in force to search for the scum that had killed Sam, but Captain Miller was seriously concerned about the increased numbers of infected that had been encountered.
After Molly was flown back to Fort Sumter and left in the capable hands of Doctor Bus, the helicopters were fueled and sent back to James Island. They were given two mission plans. Their first mission was to attempt to spot any clues that would reveal the hiding place of the people who had killed Sam, and the second mission was to assess the reason for the increased numbers of infected.
This time the Sikorsky stayed behind while the Navy VH-92A’s were all refueled and armed for combat. There was no shortage of volunteers when crews were assigned. Captain Miller gave orders for the helicopters to go to the beginning of Harborview Road at Folly Road. From there they would begin an organized search pattern hoping to accomplish both missions.
The main clue they expected to find that would indicate they had located the people who buried Molly and Sam was a concentration of the infected. Where you found living people, you could expect to find the infected trying to get to them. In this case, they were searching for armed killers, so they would most likely leave a trail of bodies. James Island was so infested with new infected dead, that it would be obvious to see a large number of them on the ground. They weren’t disappointed as they hovered into a parking lot in front of a grocery store on Folly Road, all three having spotted the bodies that were scattered around one street not far from them. They radioed Fort Sumter and asked for confirmation that they could mount an attack on one particular house because they were sure they saw one infected dead go down as they flew by. The body flew backward away from the door of the house as if it had been hit by a bullet. They hoped their perps were that stupid.
******
Randal expected Stokes to be angry when he got back and saw what had happened. The infected had been banging at the doors on the house on Shamrock Lane ever since Stokes decided to check out a small strip mall they had never searched. He saw a gun store during their earlier escape from Fort Johnson, and he decided it was always worth checking a gun store even if they came up empty handed.
He had left Randal with simple instructions. Stay in the window and watch for the helicopters. If it stayed clear for a few hours, it would be time to move out when he got back. He was anxious to start their trip south to New Orleans, and they would have been on the road already if not for the helicopters from Fort Sumter.
Despite instructions to lay low, Randal got bored. There were infected everywhere, and he was dry firing a rifle at them, pretending that he was really loading a round in the chamber each time. Randal was just being himself, so eventually he forgot what he was doing and slapped the bolt handle backward, laid a bullet inside, shoved the bolt forward, and a round was in the chamber. He dry fired at an infected in the street right in front of the house and was surprised by the recoil.
The rifle was a big gun that the
y had found in the house when they had taken up residence at Fort Johnson. He had never fired it, but Stokes had said plenty of times that it was an elephant gun. There were pictures around the house of a man carrying the gun. He looked too old to shoot a gun with that much kick, but Stokes had explained it was all a matter of technique.
The boom of the single shot was deafening, but Randal had never learned the technique of firing the rifle, so the recoil threw him backward. When he brought the rifle upward with the recoil, he tore out the entire window and frame, advertising his position to every infected dead except the one that had his feet flying through the air past his head.
Randal got to his feet and peered around the destroyed window frame to see how bad he had messed up. Judging by the number of infected converging on the steps to the front door, his guess was that he had messed up pretty bad. To make matters worse, he switched to an M4 and started shooting them. He didn’t know what else to do.
Stokes was at least a half a mile away inside the gun store, but the distinctive boom of that cannon from the house was unmistakable. He froze and tilted his head with one ear aimed toward Shamrock Lane and listened. The rattling sound of a rifle on semiautomatic wasn’t what he wanted to hear.
“Did I leave anyone at the house with Randal?”
His question was directed to a messy looking man named Franco. Franco always seemed to need a shower and a shave and smelled like the infected, but he was smarter than the rest of his misfit followers. He knew the answer to his own question as soon as he asked it. There were four men with him in the gun shop. That meant Randal was alone at the house.
“Did everyone bring their backpacks with them?”
The others all nodded or held up their backpacks.
“Good, because we aren’t going back to the house.”
“What about Randal?” asked Turk.
Stokes returned Turk’s gaze with the most sarcastic expression he could muster up.
“Are you related to Randal or something, Turk? You want to go back and hang out with your cousin until the helicopters get back?”
Turk was busy shaking his head from side to side.
“We’re moving now,” said Stokes. “We can’t get to Folly Road before the helicopters block it off, so let’s just find a place to hole up until tomorrow morning.”
Stokes was surprised when Turk asked for a second time why they weren’t going back for Randal.
“Because Randal is stupid, and Randal is about to have company. If you haven’t figured it out yet, that was him doing the shooting we just heard. Now he’s shooting the infected, and if those helicopters fly over him again, they’re going to see all the bodies. Satisfied?”
Turk nodded that he was satisfied, but Stokes was tempted to send Turk back to the house anyway. The only thing that stopped him was that they were both so dumb lucky that they would probably get away and lead everybody right back to him.
They went out the back door of the strip mall and dodged packs of infected as they looked for another place to hide. Fortunately, the infected were being distracted by the shooting that was still coming from Shamrock Lane and were drifting away in that direction.
******
The assault wasn’t the most difficult mission ever attempted by Captain Miller’s troops. They would have preferred to be dropping in from Blackhawks, but they were happy to have the Navy choppers. They weren’t intended for this type of operation, but the soldiers were craving a little action to get some payback for Molly and Sam.
The wind from the rotors would knock down a large crowd of infected that had gathered at the front of the house on Shamrock Lane. The side and back yards were heavily fenced, so there were no infected trying to get into the house from those places.
One of the helicopters did a high speed flyover from back to front. That was intended to startle anyone who was in the house and momentarily drive them back from the windows. It would also hopefully draw them to the front of the house as they would try to get a look at what had just come over their rooftop. As soon as the chopper passed the roof, it banked to the right to get out of rifle range.
The second helicopter followed the first one closely, but it stopped directly above the house and deposited a dozen soldiers on the roof. They expertly dropped their ropes and followed them down in seconds, so at least for a few moments the people inside would think the rotor wash had been from the first chopper. The second chopper banked away without exposing itself to any windows on the front of the house.
The third helicopter did the same thing over the back yard at exactly the same time. One moment the air was filled with wind and noise, and the next moment the only sound was the moaning from the street out front.
Randal didn’t have a clue that two dozen well trained soldiers were in the house with him. The dozen on the roof had dropped into windows while the noise was so loud that the sound of breaking glass blended right in. They overwhelmed Randal so quickly that they found it hard to believe this guy had survived six years. The second group was searching the first floor and they were surprised that there was no resistance.
All in all, it was a fairly disappointing raid with one exception. Randal gave up information with little more than a twist of his arm. He told them where Stokes was and how many people had gone with him. He also told them Stokes was going to New Orleans.
When the information was radioed back to Fort Sumter, the soldiers were disappointed when they were ordered to return with the prisoner, but their spirits were lifted when Captain Miller said some of them would be making a trip to New Orleans. There was no reason to believe that Stokes would still be at the gun store, and he may even know his hideout had been compromised. If anything he had become more dangerous if he had found weapons and ammunition at the gun store.
It took a few minutes to retrieve everyone from the house on Shamrock Lane. The infected had gotten inside by overwhelming the front door with their weight. There was no problem blocking off the second floor, but it was remarkable how many infected there were. The squad leaders reported to Fort Sumter that something was replenishing the population of the infected. If the infected could be compared to each other as new or old, recently turned, and so on, these were new.
The only thing they could think of was the possibility that there were more shelters in the area, and people had stocked them to last five years. After five years, the survivors had to come out into the open, probably in small groups, and they weren’t surviving the infection very long. The more quickly they were bitten, the more quickly the next group got infected.
There was also the likely chance that people were leaving their shelters for supplies and then carrying the infection back with them by hiding a bite. People hiding bites was the oldest story of the apocalypse. From small shelters to cities, relatives hoping a family member would survive would choose not to disclose a bite nine times out of ten.
For added information, the soldiers managed to get plenty of photographs to take back with them. The medical staff would welcome the opportunity to look into the question of where the new infected dead were coming from. As a matter of fact, they had requested that a few infected should be brought back to Fort Sumter for study, but the idea was put to rest quickly by Captain Miller because he had seen that idea backfire onboard Navy ships.
Landing safely at Fort Sumter, the crews escorted their blindfolded captive into the shelter. It wasn’t very easy because Randal was one of those people who managed to stay fat even though most survivors had lost weight. The main access to the shelter was down steep ladders in a large shaft, and Randal didn’t seem like climbing down a long ladder was on his list of strengths. They wound up lowering him in a sling rather than to remove his blindfold, and he complained so much they wished they had gagged him, too.
For someone who was not in the company of people who would be very fond of him, Randal was being too friendly, and the soldiers didn’t like it. They would have preferred to put him against a wall and shoot him, or may
be drop him down the entrance shaft. They were finding out that Randal was one of those people who just didn’t have a conscience. He had no remorse for burying those kids because it was what he had been told to do by Stokes. When he had been told not to drill an air hole in one of the coffins, he didn’t question the order even though he knew the kid inside would be dead long before he could be found and dug up.
One of the storage rooms had steel cages in it where supplies could be stored with extra security, and the designers of the shelter must have considered the possibility that there would be a need for a jail because a toilet and sink were in one of the cages. Randal couldn’t imagine where he had been taken, but he felt air conditioning. In his warped mind he wondered if his captives would let him become a soldier. When the blindfold was removed, he looked around with surprised satisfaction and actually asked what time to expect food.
No one answered for a few minutes as the soldiers locked him in and set up a guard rotation. It wasn’t so much that they were ignoring him as it was anger. They couldn’t believe his audacity.
When Randal asked for a second time, one of the soldiers couldn’t resist.
“Haven’t you heard, Porky? We’re not going to feed you. We’re going to eat you. There’s enough meat on your bones to feed the whole camp.”
How everyone kept a straight face was a good question, but they did it. No one so much as grinned. A few of them gave Randal sideways glances to see his reaction. At first it was a big smile as if he knew they weren’t serious. Then it faded to a blank expression, especially when one of the Corporals walked over to the bars and looked Randal over from head to toe in appreciation.
“At least two meals,” said the Corporal as he walked away.
